Today In Cold War History
1947 – Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founding father of Pakistan, gives a speech to the Constituent Assembly, the contents and meaning of which remain contentious today.
1952 – Hussein bin Talal is proclaimed King of Jordan.
1960 – Chad declares independence.
1961 – The former Portuguese territories in India of Dadra and Nagar Haveli are merged to create the Union Territory Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
1962 – Vostok 3 launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev becomes the first person to float in microgravity.
1972 – Vietnam War: The last United States ground combat unit leaves South Vietnam.
1975 – East Timor: Governor Mário Lemos Pires of Portuguese Timor abandons the capital Dili, following a coup by the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) and the outbreak of civil war between UDT and Fretilin.
1979 – Two Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-134s collide over the Ukrainian city of Dniprodzerzhynsk and crash, killing all 178 aboard both airliners.
1982 – A bomb explodes on Pan Am Flight 830, en route from Tokyo, Japan to Honolulu, Hawaii, killing one teenager and injuring 15 passengers.The bomb was placed by Mohammed Rashed, a Jordanian linked to the 15 May Organization. In 1988, he was arrested in Greece, tried, convicted of murder and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. He was paroled in 1996 after serving eight years. He was later extradited to the US from Egypt in 1998 to stand trial. In 2006, as part of a plea bargain agreement he was sentenced to a further seven years in federal prison. As per his agreement with US prosecutors in providing information about other terrorist plots he was released from prison in March of 2013 but as of March 2014 still remained in a federal immigration detention facility in upstate New York awaiting deportation.
1984 – “We begin bombing in five minutes” – United States President Ronald Reagan, while running for re-election, jokes while preparing to make his weekly Saturday address on National Public Radio.